Health and Fitness

Street Workout: A New-Generation Sport in Aruba

​19 May 2017

​​​I think we can all agree that it’s difficult to explain to people what Street Workout is when they were never educated on the concept. Every time we want to explain to people what Street Workout or Calisthenics are it's very difficult, because it’s a type of workout that is not highly marketed as many others. It also depends on where you are and if the people are exposed to the sport, meanwhile it’s popular in other bigger countries e.g. USA, Russia and many European countries.

I would like to focus my story on Street Workout in Aruba; Aruba is a small island in the Caribbean that is not yet exposed to this fun and advantageous type of sport (Read more about the benefits here). I had a hard time finding a proper park to do my workouts in Aruba and every time I asked around, people didn’t even know about Street Workout, but at the end (after a long search) I was lucky enough to find Rusty Barz.​

After training with this group of Street Workout and Calisthenics athletes I felt like part of the family, I realized how they share the same passion and help each other succeed in this sport. I couldn’t help to notice that they are quite young and are starting a new movement in Aruba, so I decided to interview the founder: Mr. Dennis Tromp, and one of the athletes who started with him since the beginning of Rusty Barz: Mr. Jair Paesch.​​

​The many reasons and inspiration to start Street Workout

These two athletes have their reasons for starting street workout like many of us who perform this kind of sport; at the beginning most of us are also unaware of the street workout movement, especially because it's not overly exposed, therefore it’s more of a discovery and exploration experience.

Street Workout is also a sport with a social concept behind it, to inspire the youth to join the family of athletes and to find an effective hobby to do in their spare time. Nowadays doing any kind of sport is limited for those that don’t have the budget for a membership, equipment and many other requirements that many sports have.​Street Workout is not only about the training part, but also about the familiar vibe you get when you are in a calisthenics park, everybody is there to help each other improve no matter their fitness level.

Dennis has been a surfer for a long period of time and at some point of his athletic career he noticed that his body was weak and needed extra training to improve in surfing, therefore he decided to join the gym. After a period of time going to the gym he noticed that the vibe in such environment wasn’t as he expected and it was expensive to keep the habit going, so he decided to quit.​​He watched some videos of the Street Workout Athlete Frank Medrano and he was inspired to do calisthenics, but then the moment he discovered Bar Brothers was the moment he got hooked and started building his own Calisthenics Park.

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​How much work does it take to transforming a vision into reality?

The beginning of Rusty Barz was when Dennis started recycling metal bars from all around the island, when he finally got enough material he asked his uncle, neighbors and friends to help him build the park. The first thing that was built was the middle ‘triangle’ of the park, which mainly consists of different levels pull up bars.​When he finished the park he asked Jair to join him in his trainings, at the beginning Jair didn’t know what calisthenics and street workout was, but after Dennis explained the fun things he could do with Street Workout Jair was hooked to this ‘strange’ sport.​The opening of the Rusty Barz calisthenics park was on 28 December 2012, which was a big achievement for Dennis and beginning of a great adventure for Jair. After a while more and more people(mostly from around the neighborhood) started to notice the park and have been coming to train since then, the park kept growing year by year until what you can see now.

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Focus on improving your overall fitness

Jair told us about the fitness levels he has achieved thank to street workout, in Aruba there aren’t many hobbies a young person can do without money, so for him joining Rusty Barz was a way to escape his boredom and to build a fit body at the same time without spending money on gym memberships.

Dennis mentioned the benefits that calisthenics can bring to your body, but he also emphasizes on the option that when you become more advanced and knowledgeable you can be creative and emphasize in learning new tricks. In street workout you can focus in learning different kind of tricks, some people go for the explosive movements (360 pull ups and muscle ups) and others prefer static tricks such as back lever, front lever, planches, etc.

​At the end you decide what you want to learn, it even works for people who just want to build muscle mass(adding weights) or maintain a fit physique, and it’s all up to each person’s fitness goals.

​​How to educate Aruban population about this new movement?

The first reaction of people in Aruba when we talk about the sport is: ‘What is that?’ It happens to many of us when we talk about our hobby with our local friends, most of them don’t know what it is, if we try to explain it, they tend to confused it with gymnastics. Either way the best way to educate them is by showing them what we can do.​​Jair takes the approach to show his skills to his classmates at school, after they see him perform they tend to find it pretty cool and some agree to join him in one of his trainings at Rusty Barz. Jair works out almost every day, therefore he is always welcoming people to join him in his afternoon trainings.

The best part of Rusty Barz is the portable bar that Dennis built, which is used to give workshops and demonstrations around the island, this is a unique way to advertise the sport around the island and to make them more visible to the public. Dennis took a pull up bar/dip bar who a friend left behind and designed a special way on how to break it into pieces so he can take it wherever he wants.​On the last Easter holidays the whole team of Rusty Barz went to Eagle Beach to give a demonstration, many people were interested and some guys even joined them in training. If you would like to know more about Rusty Barz events follow their social media channels! On Facebook and Instagram.

In conclusion Dennis has big goals for Rusty Barz, he wants to make Street Workout more popular in Aruba and would like to invite more people to join him in Rusty Barz. Many of Rusty Barz members hope to get to compete in international competitions, but they’re demotivated by the fact that Aruba is such a small island and the opportunities are limited.

Calisthenics and Street Workout is a big movement that has just started recent years ago in Aruba, Dennis knows that is a long way to go and that with patience, dedication and the support from the community everything is possible. When the times comes that Rusty Barz get to the level it wants to get, young athletes like Jair who dream on becoming big in this sport can have the opportunity to participate in competitions and follow the steps of stars athletes they look up to.​In order to support Rusty Barz we would like to invite you to follow Rusty Barz on Instagram and Facebook, we are also working on a website that will be announced in our social media channels when the time comes. Rusty Barz would also like to motivate everyone reading this to join us, to keep improving and never give up! We are in this together!